The Last Mile Home

by Di Morrissey

  En masse the car counted, ‘One . . .’ Then, after what seemed longer than a watched kettle coming to the boil, they all shouted, ‘Four! We’re here.’

  ‘Not quite, we have to find our house,’ came the young woman’s voice. Heads hung out of windows, the dog barked and the car swung through the gate onto the track up to Anglesea.

  ‘I bags doing the gates.’ Kevin sprang from the car as the gate loomed into the headlights. The engine idled with an ominously tired cough as the boy struggled with the gate that was dragging in the dirt.

  ‘Help him lift it, Abby,’ said the father, wiping his hands around the big circle of the fat steering wheel as if trying to energise the car over this last hurdle. A tall slim girl of twenty, her long dark hair tied in a ponytail, wearing a full-skirted, faded flowered dress and old sandshoes, helped her brother lift the gate and then stood back expectantly.

  But Betsy the Buick was pooped. She’d come this far and that was close enough. Like a plump matron suddenly relieved of the constraints of her corsets, the doors burst open and crammed passengers rolled out into the cool night air as Betsy steamed and heaved and refused to start.

  Bob McBride understood her moods. ‘That’s it, Mum. She won’t budge till morning now.’

  Wails replaced the excited chatter and laughter. Gwen McBride stood with a small child on one hip, his three-year-old head leaning sleepily against her shoulder. In her other hand she held back the excited Border collie on his leash. ‘So what are we going to do? How far to the house do you reckon?’

  ‘One way to find out, eh? Shut the gate, Kev. Everyone grab a bag, roll up the windows. We’ll hoof it from here and bring Betsy up after breakfast.’

  ‘Grab some food, that Rinso box from the boot has bread and eggs in it,’ directed Gwen McBride. ‘Just in case there’s nothing in the cottage. Though Mrs Pemberton said she’d have it ready for us. But you never know what that means.’

  Amid mutterings, moans, giggles and admonishments, the McBride tribe of seven plus a dog and silkworms in a shoe box, straggled up the track, the slowly rising moon lighting their way. Bob McBride soon had them heartily singing, ‘If I knew you were coming I’d have baked a cake . . .’ as they made their way towards their unknown new home.

  BARNEY DROVE BACK TO AMBA LATE SUNDAY morning. It felt like a Sunday too: a lazy, sun-ripened day stretching ahead without any commitments. However, he knew his father would insist they have everything ready for the start of mustering the next day.

  The Frenchams’ party had been fun, and had virtually continued through until the breakfast barbecue. Some of the boys had hit the keg pretty hard and were the worse for wear in the morning, but all had hoed into the sausages, chops, eggs and bacon sizzling on the barbecue in a grove of gum trees. Sitting around on logs, with their plates on their laps, the girls toasting slices of bread on sticks before the fire or dishing out thick slabs that had soaked up the grease on the barbecue, all agreed it had been a great party.

  The two dozen partygoers had all known each other for years. Friendships had been renewed after stints at boarding schools, trips abroad, or work out of the district. Most would now stay in the area on their parents’ properties in readiness for putting down their own roots. Although the girls would move to wherever their husbands might be, few would marry outside this resident circle.

  Barney glanced up at the fresh pink gumtips translucent against the blue light of morning. How Australian. How he’d missed the clearness of the light, the smell of the bush, the sound of the native birds in the years he’d been living in the city.

  He had graduated from Kings School at Parramatta and like many promising and well-to-do country lads had joined the staff of one of the big wool broking houses in preparation for returning to work their own places. In the wood-panelled offices and cavernous warehouses of Golds-borough Mort he had learned much about the business of classing and selling wool, as well as servicing the farmers and graziers with everything from finance to shearing machines.

  They had been years of mixed feelings. He had missed the land terribly. Every holiday and long weekend he caught a crowded steam train from Central Station and went home to Amba. Mrs Anderson would always make one of his favourite meals; he would have a sherry with his father before dinner and they would discuss business matters before he took his place at the long rosewood dining table. His mother was glad to see him he knew, but apart from asking him general questions about his life in Sydney, she simply assumed he was doing well and was happy. He had given up trying to persuade her to come to the city and shop or go to the theatre. His parents had visited Sydney only twice while he lived there. His father had come down on one other occasion to see a solicitor and they had lunched together at the Australia Hotel. It had not been a happy dining experience. His father had complained about the service, the standard of the food and the cost. When Barney offered to pay for the lunch, Phillip Holten had curtly remarked that he hoped this wasn’t how he spent his money in Sydney.

  There were compensations. The postwar years in Sydney were stimulating. Migrants, many of them misplaced persons from refugee camps in Europe, were starting to arrive. Often when on errands to the waterfront, Barney would watch the huge ships with decks crowded with passengers being nudged in to the wharf by tugs. He looked at the travellers’ faces and tried to imagine how they felt about arriving in a land that was so strange and different from their homelands. While some looked eager and hopeful, others still had the pain and horror of what they’d left behind etched into their faces.

  In the office, on the beach at weekends and at parties, Barney met some of the younger migrants from Britain and Europe. He was particularly attracted to the girls with their accents and very different look. But it wasn’t easy to make friends with them for they seemed aloof and uncomfortable with a lifestyle where young men abandoned them on a scorched beach while they spent hours in a dangerous looking ocean. Nor were they at ease when their companions plunged into wild terrain with haversacks to go bushwalking.

  The Australian girls were easier to get along with and although he made good friends with many and had a lot of fun, he didn’t get serious with any of them. Nor could he imagine being married to any of them. In the heady days of postwar booming Sydney they were all obsessed with the material joys of peacetime living. He couldn’t visualise any of them being content to ride the boundary fences with him. While Amba was a gracious homestead and wealthy property, Barney would live simply though comfortably until the day came when he took over the reins from his father. The daughters of other graziers understood how it worked, unlike the city girls who rarely expressed interest in his country background anyway.

  He was glad to quit the city and return home to his special country, the miles of New England land that encompassed Amba’s five thousand acres. The actual homestead, the physical trappings that established their credentials to be there, didn’t mean as much to him as the indefinable quality of place, of belonging.

  The unravelling of the landscape — its rocks and trees, ridges and gullies — was as recognisable as his own face in a mirror. He felt he understood the Aborigines’ affinity with the land, even though he knew little about them. There were none living in the immediate vicinity; some properties had itinerant Aboriginal stockmen but there was little contact. Phillip Holten distrusted them and had no time for what he called ’the lazy blacks’.

  Barney shook his head and concentrated on the road. He started to think through the gear he would need and what had to be accomplished before the shearing was under way. It was good country that carried two sheep to the acre. His father set exacting standards and it was up to Barney to see they were carried down the line.

  He tried not to compare his father with the men who had been at the Frenchams’. They were rugged and hearty and he enjoyed their laconic humour, their teasing banter and long solid discussions on politics, wool and farming. Exchanges with his father meant more listening and little chance to put across his own vie
wpoint. There wasn’t much banter or wit. Barney quickly cut off any thoughts of wishing his father were different. He’d sorted that out as a boy, realising his father would never be like those of his friends. He knew his father was honest, believed in what he was doing and was proud of his achievements. But Barney wished that his father would acknowledge his own achievements and deep down longed to hear his father tell him he was proud of him.

  Barney turned off the bitumen onto the dirt road to the homestead, hoping there wouldn’t be a big Sunday roast waiting for him. He couldn’t eat a thing. Suddenly he noticed something different — a car was parked at the entrance to the Pembertons’. No, not parked. The bonnet was up and someone was tinkering under the hood. It wasn’t a car he recognised as belonging to anyone he knew — a thirties, at least, Buick. He turned in and stopped.

  ‘G’day. You stalled, are you?’

  ‘She ain’t going anywhere, that’s for sure. Not for the moment anyway. Temperamental old biddy, but I know what makes her tick.’ Bob McBride grinned at Barney. He wore a patched khaki shirt, old army pants and boots, and he wielded a spanner in grease-stained hand. A cheek was smudged with black.

  ‘Can I give you a hand? I’ve tools in the ute. Or do you want a tow?’ offered Barney.

  ‘Thanks, mate. We’ll be right, I think. But you could get in and turn her over for me.’

  Barney sat behind the wheel, sinking deep into the old seat. He turned the ignition once, then again, and she finally spluttered and caught. ‘Keep her going, rev her up a bit. That’ll do us.’ McBride slammed the bonnet shut with a bang and tucked the spanner in his hip pocket.

  Barney fiddled with the gear lever, made sure it was still in neutral and edged out of the car. McBride was rolling a cigarette.

  ‘She picked a bugger of a time to call it quits,’ he said.

  ‘You on your way to the Pembertons’?’

  ‘Last night we were. Been a long day’s drive and she couldn’t drag herself up to the house, could she? No, she karks it at the gate. Had to hoof it up to the cottage in the dark. Bit of a lark really,’ he added cheerfully.

  ‘You’re staying with the Pembertons?’

  ‘Nah. Staying in the other house. Doing some work for him, plus looking for a bit in my own line. Bob McBride, by the way.’ He held out his hand then withdrew it and wiped it on the side of his pants. ‘Grease, sorry.’

  ‘Barney Holten,’ he took the stained hand and shook it firmly. ‘What’s your line, if you don’t mind my asking?’

  ‘I’m a shearer. Brought the family over to settle in one place for a bit. A mate put me on to Keith Pemberton.’

  Barney nodded. He’d heard the Pembertons had been looking for someone to stay on the place as a kind of caretaker, handyman and rousabout.

  ‘Are you sure your car will keep going now? I’m happy to follow you up the track a bit in case she conks out again.’

  ‘She wouldn’t bloody dare. No, once she’s running she’s right. Just needed a good night’s rest and a bit of a kick in the guts,’ grinned McBride, sticking his hand-rolled cigarette to his bottom lip and getting into the car. ‘Righto then. Thanks for stopping. You a local?’

  ‘Yes. My father owns Amba. We’re neighbours.’

  ‘Well, I’ll probably see you round then. Cheerio.’ Bob McBride cautiously slipped Betsy into first gear and eased up the track.

  ‘I’ll shut the gate,’ called Barney and McBride gave a thumbs-up and a wave without looking back. Barney grinned to himself as he got in the ute and resumed the trip home.

  The McBrides were settling into the manager’s house at the Pembertons’ amid much confusion and laughter. Rooms were shared, and after a tussle over which of the ten-year-old twin girls got the top bunk, relative peace reigned. Abigail, who was twenty, had the single bed in the room with the bunks for Shirley and Colleen. Brian, the three-year-old, had his cot in with teenage Kevin. Gwen McBride pulled down the heavy faded cotton curtains and left their bedroom window bare so she and Bob could lie in bed and look at the paddocks and the stand of trees in the distance.

  ‘No one’s going to be snooping around here peeping in windows, so what’s the point,’ she smiled.

  ‘Sun’ll wake us up,’ grumbled Bob, only half serious. He was up at sunrise most mornings anyway.

  Sarah and Keith Pemberton had welcomed them warmly, offering to lend any supplies or gear until they were settled. ‘There’s plenty of linen, china, cutlery, kitchen utensils and so forth on hand. You know how you keep accumulating stuff,’ Sarah Pemberton told Gwen, who had never been in one place long enough to acquire more than very basic necessities.

  The children were gone at daylight exploring their new domain. Rules were established about letting young Brian get anywhere near the dam in the top home paddock.

  ‘Too far for him to walk,’ said Kevin.

  ‘Listen, he’s stowed away in the back of a truck or on a tractor before today,’ their father reminded them.

  The twins found an overgrown kitchen garden which they commandeered as their own, promising to keep it weeded and watered. Their father warned them not to repeat an earlier habit of pulling up quarter-grown carrots and potatoes to see how they were coming along. The twins scoffed at him. ‘We know how to grow things now, Daddy,’ they insisted.

  As Abigail helped her mother unpack and sort things out, she wondered whether she’d be able to find work in the area. She’d done her St John Ambulance course and had worked as a hospital aide. She had been a general office hand in a seed and grain store, and when not near a town had worked as a hand around the shearing sheds.

  Gwen worried about her eldest daughter, wishing they could give her a bit more help to develop a career so she’d have some financial security and be able to buy the things they couldn’t afford to give her.

  Bob McBride was less concerned. ‘She’ll make her way. She’s bright and pretty and can turn her hand to most things. She’ll find a nice bloke soon enough.’

  ‘Not the way we’ve been moving around,’ sighed Gwen.

  Abby was aware her parents discussed her future and wondered herself where her life was going, but she wasn’t too worried just yet. She really hoped that this time they would be staying longer so she might be able to make friends and even have a social life. She had heard there were a lot of young people in the district and her father had hinted they might be staying on for a fair bit. It was an exciting prospect and Abby already sensed a nice feeling about their latest home and the district.

  After two days, Abby took a break from the house, borrowed the small truck her father had for his use, and went exploring some of Angle-sea’s three thousand acres. She took a sandwich and a bottle of soft drink and drove through several paddocks. Some had been ploughed over and the dark black soil showed a build-up of years of topsoil being washed down in floods. Another had been seeded with feed grass which was sprouting in a haze of green clumps. Stolid Hereford and black Angus cattle watched her progress with little interest.

  She left the truck in the shade of some gumtrees and walked a mile along the lightly wooded creek until she came upon a perfect swimming hole. Rushing floodwaters had at some time gouged out the side of the bank so that it was now a wide still pool through which the creek flowed. This was no secret find — an old tyre swung on a rope tied to one of the overhanging weeping willows. The dark pool looked cool and inviting, so Abby decided to have a swim before eating her lunch. She peeled off her dress but modestly left on her bra and ‘scanties’, as her mother called them, even though it was doubtful there was another person for many miles.

  The water was cold and felt like pinpricks on her skin. It smelled of disintegrating leaves, sodden twigs and faintly of tea-tree oil — an earthy, not unpleasant tang — and her white skin took on a rusty hue beneath its surface.

  She swam around the pool, disturbing several frogs; then, glancing at the tyre, decided to get out and try it. Gingerly she pulled in the rope, put one foot on the tyre and pushe
d off from the bank with the other. The tyre swung out towards the centre of the creek and as she was about to let go and drop into the deep water, the rotten rope broke with a crack and she plunged unceremoniously into the creek. She came up spluttering and burst out laughing at her stupidity, glad no one had witnessed her ungainly descent into the water.

  She sat in the dappled sunlight drying off as she ate her sandwich, her long hair splayed down her back. It felt good to be on her own — a rarity in the McBride family — and for once not to have to set an example to the others.

  She pulled her dress back on, laced her sanshoes and started back along the narrow track sheep had made beside the creek. After a while she heard the sound of a horse. She stopped and saw a dark brown horse cantering through the trees towards the creek. As she watched, the horse turned on to the track and slowed to a walk as the rider saw her.

  Barney Holten pulled up the horse, touched his hat and grinned down at Abby.

  ‘Hello there. How was the swim?’

  Abby had been shyly waiting to see who it was, prepared to chat for a minute or two. But at the sight of the handsome young man with faintly amused eyes, a cheeky grin and a well-bred voice, she was overcome with embarrassment and blushed deeply. He must have seen her cavorting in her underwear in the creek. She lowered her eyes and started to stammer then simply turned and fled to the safety of the truck. She quickly got in, started it, jumped the clutch, started again and drove away as fast as she safely could, still cringing at the memory of those dancing grey-green eyes.

  Barney stared after her, quite flabbergasted. What had he said to make her take off like a startled rabbit? He’d merely assumed from her wet hair streaming down her back and leaving a dark damp patch on her dress that she’d been at the old swimming hole. Did she have a guilty conscience over something? She could scarcely have been trespassing way out here. He nudged the horse forward to the Pembertons’ but the image of the girl stayed with him.